Draped to the Ankles

The Penitent Magdalen in Art

Mary Magdalen has always been a popular figure in western art. In the middle ages she was revered as the woman closest to Jesus. She washed his feet with her hair and was the first person to see him after he had arisen (see earlier post below). But as the centuries wore on, her association with "fallen women" grew more prominent, until she became the prostitute saved by the teachings of Jesus, which is not the same as being his confidant at all.

When she was saved, Mary Magdalen repented her life of sin. The Magdalen as penitent had songs and poems written about her. Her tears were considered sacred. Churches sprang up dedicated to her. Holy orders of former prostitutes - Magdalenes - existed in some cities. This was the Magdalen everyone knew. The companion and confidant of Christ was forgotten in the shadow of a more sensational figure.

There are two types of images of the Penitent Magdalen found in Renaissance and Baroque art. The first type was made popular by Titian, and really held sway above all others. This was the beautiful Magdalen, eyes tearfully lifted towards heaven, with an ample bosom only partially covered with her glorious main of chestnut hair.

Penitent Mary Magdalen
Titian Vecellio
1560's

Titian was followed by many others, including El Greco, Guercino, Vouet, and both Gentileschis. There is one word that describes these images better than "devotional," and that's "titillating." The Magdalen became an excuse to portray the female form without the inappropriateness of a common nude.

Guido Reni
1630's

But it wasn't just about showing naked women. The late 16th century was the time of the Reformation, when the Catholic church was losing the faithful to the new Protestant faiths right and left. The Counter-Reformation sought to bring them back any way they could, and one way was by selling sex along with piety. Dramatic, often scandalous images cropped up. Some of the first "shock" art appeared at this time, as artists experimented with new and dramatic ideas and images. While some found this new art offensive, most were drawn to the power of the imagery.

Paradoxically, another image of the Penitent Magdalen emerged, created by the most scandalous of artists, Caravaggio. While most of his images are dramatic and powerful, he went in a different direction with the Penitent Magdalen.

Caravaggio
1597

The Magdalen has been transformed from a half-naked prostitute to a quietly thoughtful rich woman who has thrown off her jewels and worldly goods. This Magdalen has just turned from her wicked ways and sits regretting her past. He's not selling sex here, only a quiet repentance.

This leads to my favorite painting of all time. Georges de La Tour painted a Magdalen that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Georges de La Tour
1638

The power in this one lies in the dramatic use of light and shadow, and the fact that you cannot see her face. She could be anyone. Any woman could comfortably put herself in the Magdalen's place as she contemplates death and the vanities of life. She's also so contemplative, so still she seems to be meditating. The figure even has a smooth, waxy sheen to the skin, as if she is a wax statue. This is a painting that I will sit in front of and feel relaxed and at peace. But perhaps that's just me.

La Tour was famous for his Magdalens. Another version is one in which he combined his rich, faceless woman with the more traditional penitent living in poverty. He painted several versions, one of which hangs in the County Mueseum of Art, Los Angeles.

Georges de La Tour
1640

The Magdalen in art was the Magdalen of the popular imagination. Whatever happened to be the prevalent view of her was the way she was portrayed, whether as devoted follower of Christ or repentant sinner. But somehow, she was never portrayed as being as close to Christ as some would claim today. Even in the 70's, the Magdalen in Jesus Christ Superstar sang about loving him, but there was never any deeper relationship implied. The idea of the Magdalen being the wife of Jesus, while not entirely new, has never been explored in art or culture. There was only one legend of the Magdalen coming to Marseilles with a daughter, and that is sketchy at best. Ultimately, the "woman" beside Jesus in the last supper is John, and always has been. The Magdalen was portrayed in her own way.

All Better Now

It took a week, but I am mostly myself again. I picked up the bug at a sleepover for the 13-year-olds at church (yeah, I know they call it a "lock-in," but that just sounds very ugly to me.)

OK, so 12 13-year-olds and two adults. We realized after the fact that we should have replaced that third adult when he backed out on us at the last minute, but we thought we would be alright. I thought it was stressful, but apparently the kids didn't think so, and it seemed to do what I wanted it to do - bond them together as a more cohesive group. I don't hear half as much name-calling and insults as I did before.

When I was preparing questions for a certain game we played, I realized that although my son is homeschooled, he has still experienced just as much - if not more than his peers. Questions like, "Have you ever stayed home from school by pretending to be sick?" Oh, yes, he has. Technically, it's "stayed in bed," but it counts. Then there's "Have you ever snuck out of the house?" Another check for him. "Have you ever lived overseas?" Not many of them could answer yes, but he can. At one point, I was looking over the questions to be sure I wasn't asking too many that he couldn't say yes to, and that's when I realized that he's a pretty well-rounded kid. He has experienced almost all the things - good and bad - that the average American kid experiences, thanks to his stints in the prison sytem the public school system.

Enough for now. I have a lot of schoolwork, but I do want to get back to the Magdalen as soon as time permits.

Porcelain Throne

Have you seen that commercial for Clorox Wipes where the mom is reading to her child and suddenly reaches over, grabs a wipe, and cleans up a mess on the table without stopping what she's doing? There's another one with a dad doing something with his kid, same concept. The idea is that with Clorox Wipes, you can clean up whenever you feel the urge.

Well, here's one you probably won't see. Kneeling in front of the toilet, waiting to toss the rest of everything you've eaten that week, and thinking that the rim and seat are looking a bit icky. So you reach under the sink, grab an Orange scented Clorox Wipe, get those nasty spots off, and carry on. I like those wipes. I don't like the stomach flu.

Mary Magdalen in Art

It occurs to me that with all this attention on The Da Vinci Code, I haven't really posted much about Mary Magdalen. Now, I could say something self-deprecating about my "vast knowledge" here, but the fact is that I did a LOT of research on Mary Magdalen in grad school. She was going to be my PhD thesis. Ok, I could say something self-deprecating about my non-existent PhD, but I'll leave it at that.

So. Mary Magdalen. If you have seen any of the many shows about the Da Vinci Code, or even read the Da Vinci Code, you already know the basics. The Mary Magdalen from the bible is very different from the image that has developed over the centuries. In the bible, she was a rich woman who followed Jesus. She was one of the Mary's present at the crucifixion. She is the woman Jesus first appeared to after he had risen from the tomb. She is also the woman who had seven demons cast out of her. But there is no evidence that she was ever a prostitute; the woman taken in adultery and saved from stoning by Jesus was a different woman. So was the woman who washed Jesus's feet with her hair

In art, the Magdalen has had many incarnations and many functions. In early Christian art, she played an important role as the first person to see the arisen Christ. He told her to be happy, but that she could not touch him for he had not yet ascended to heaven.

Nolie Me Tangere by Giotto
1320's

She was also seen as the emaciated penitent clothed only in her hair. But again, this image stemmed from a story about an early saint, Saint Mary of the Desert, who spent years wandering and praying and being fed and nourished by angels. But she wasn't the Magdalen, either.

Penitent Magdalen by Donatello
1457

Another popular image of the Magdalen shows her with the alabaster ointment jar. This actually has two different origins. The first is from the story in which a woman, later identified as the Magdalen, washed Christ's feet with expensive oils. The second symbolizes her involvement in washing Christ's body after death, which may or may not be true but was never mentioned.

Mary Magdalen by Carlo Dolci
ca 1660

The penitent Magdalen was to have enormous influence in the Baroque period of art, but since that is my favorite era and I have a lot to say (and pictures to show), I think I'll leave that for another time.

"Don't Even Think of Bringing Gum"

Somehow, I missed this excitement when it happened. A 12-year-old boy stuck chewing gum on a Frankenthaler at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Wow, talk about kids with no sense of right and wrong. What gets me is that it happened at all. We go to our little art museum here and the guards are constantly telling kids not to even touch the walls, let alone get close to the artwork. I think the DIA needs to re-think their guard policies, because I'm sure there are more than a few underage philistines out there who would find this kind of thing hilarious.

I Didn't Know I was Green At All

But this does sound like me - or at least what I hope people think of as "me."

You Are Teal Green

You are a one of a kind, original person. There's no one even close to being like you. Expressive and creative, you have a knack for making the impossible possible. While you are a bit offbeat, you don't scare people away with your quirks. Your warm personality nicely counteracts and strange habits you may have.

(Hat Tip to Quilts Galore.)

McGuffey's Readers

Most people have at least heard of McGuffey's Readers even if they have never seen one. That is because they are schoolbooks that were published from 1836 to the 1920's. Now that's staying power. In that time, the readers were revised three times; that in itself would be unheard of today, when school textbooks have to be revised every 2 or 3 years so the publishers can sell more books.

The first revision was in 1856 and the second in 1879, long after W. H. McGuffey's death. Nothing from the earlier versions was retained. That 1879 edition was published virtually unchanged into the 1920's. But it means that the most popular edition has absolutely nothing in common with the original edition aside from its name. I know that a lot of people who want or sell editions of McGuffey have no idea that there are different editions. I have asked on eBay more than once which edition a seller had, and they would say "the revised." Hmph.

I now own all three revisions of McGuffey's Fourth Reader. I have a number of fourth readers from different publishers in order to extablish baseline comparisons against publishers and time periods, and I wanted to compare the different editions as well. You can find reprints of the 1836 edition published by Mott Media, and reprints of the 1879-1920 version are available from Amazon. I was going through and comparing them for content, style, and tone when I noticed this little caveat in the Mott version:

Slight changes have taken place for the sake of clarification. Those changes are as follows: a. some punctuation has been changed to keep it consistent wth current usage; b. many words which used to be hyphenated are now shown as one word; c. the following lesson has been omitted because it was not appropriate today: XVII, and the last half of paragraph 11 in lesson VII.

The changes in punctauation and hyphenation I can see, no problem. But you know I had to know what they meant by "not appropriate today." I don't have an original copy of the 1836 edition, so I haven't been able to find out what lesson XVIII was, but lesson VII is in the 1856 edition that I have. So, in the interest of information and education, I will share with you the part deemed "not appropriate today" by Mott Media.

From "The Whale Ship" (Regular font indicates what was left in. Italics is what was omitted.)

On the 27th of December, the three boats, with the remainder of the men, started in company from the island, for Juan Fernandez, a distance of two thousand five hundred miles! On the 12th of January, the boats parted company in a gale. Then commenced a scene of suffering, which cannot be contemplated without horror. The men died, one after another, and the survivors lived upon their flesh. In the captain's boat, on the first of February, three only were living; they cast lots to see which of them should die. It fell upon the youngest, a nephew of the captain. He seated himself in the bow of the boat, with calmness and fortitude -- was shot and eaten!

Shot and eaten! How did the captain explain that to his sister or brother? "Oh, yeah, well, he was the youngest and tasti -- I mean we were starving, weren't we!"

Ok, so it's a bit gory and gruesome, but I think most kids today would just find it amusing. I know I did. Now if I can find out what lesson XVIII was...

Everyone Knows It's Windy

Many of you know I'm not much of a housekeeper. Ok, I'm not a housekeeper at all. But the other day(s) I scrubbed, vacuumed, rearranged and dusted my TV room so I could hold a meeting there. I cleaned out the bookshelves and arranged pictures on them, as well as my Egytpian cat/Buddha statue collection. It was looking nice, spotless even. This is an amazingly rare occurrence.

Then the March winds picked up. They come every year in El Paso. They are a nuisance. The worst part is all the dirt and dust being flung into the air. And if you have old casement windows from the 50's, closing them is only marginally helpful. I had barely finished admiring my handy work in the TV room when I saw the dirt coating my freshly vacuumed bookcases (sigh). Sometimes, you just can't win.

Our Man Voltaire

It seems Voltaire is a dangerous man, even though he's been dead for over two centuries. His play, Fanaticism pissed off the Catholic church when he was alive, and is upsetting the Muslims now that he's dead. I know, you're shocked that something is causing Muslims to riot.

I say hurrah for the French. The mayor of the small French town Saint-Genis-Pouilly decided not to give in to pressure from the Islamic front. Rather than cancelling a reading of the work, he posted riot police outside the convention center. The resulting disturbance was considered minor, being lead by the usual disaffected Muslim youths.

The article is quite interesting if you have only a minor acquaintance with Voltaire, which describes me. But what made me laugh out loud was the last sentence:

Now that tempers have calmed, Mayor Bertrand says he is proud his town took a stand by refusing to cave in under pressure to call off the reading. Free speech is modern Europe's "foundation stone," he says. "For a long time we have not confirmed our convictions, so lots of people think they can contest them."

He does have one regret: He found the play, five acts in archaic verse, "deeply boring."

Now I suppose Voltaire's supporters will be rioting in the streets.

This is Too Much

Bob over at Illustrated Ideas has an article about a church hate group that is harrasssing the families of soldiers who have died in Iraq. Apparently, this "church" hates gays to the point where they think God is punishing America for harboring them. Then, in a great "leap of faith" they blame the military victims of roadside bombings, and are protesting at their funerals!!!! Apparently, our soldiers are all "fags." I'm not making this up. Go look at the website (however, I have no desire to link to them directly. See below).

I had heard of these people before now. The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, KS, has already been deemed a hate group. This "church" is just an obvious attempt to gain as much attention as possible by being as controversially hateful as they could possibly be. But this is going too far. I support the legislation that will make it a felony to protest at a funeral. A funeral, for pete's sake! What are we, Muslims?

For the record, this so-called church is not affiliated with any of the Baptist conventions. Baptists are Christians. These people are not. This hate group has a couple of websites which you should see, but rather than waste my precious linkage, I will point you to the Wikipedia page about it. They have the links there.

Oh, and apparently, God also hates Sweden. You're next, Lars!

Father and Son

The Connecticut liberal democrat in me is cringing, hands over her eyes, screaming, "No! No! Oh my god, no!"

But the mother of a Texan is just happy he's spending time with his dad.

Friday Catblogging

I already thought machine quilting was more difficult than it should be...

But then it got really hard to do.

Holy Moly

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, is in court for allegedly stealing ideas from Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I have a few problems with this. First, you can't "steal" ideas in literature. "There's nothing new under the sun," after all. You can plagarize by stealing someone's words and phrases, but you can't steal ideas, no matter how original they may seem. Second, if every person who wrote historical fiction based on research they had done were sued for stealing the information they used, there would be no historical fiction published. I don't see how this case could be considered anything more than a nuisance.